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Cooking 'Round the Clock: Rachael Ray's 30-Minute Meals Review
`Cooking `Round the Clock' is by Rachael Ray, who is seeming more and more like an old friend, as this is the fourth of her books I am reviewing on top of watching her an average of 90 minutes a day on the Food Network and twice that on Fridays when her travelogue / celebrity interview shows air in the evening.
For those of you who really live the 30 Minute lifestyle and can't wade through my usual 1000 words, I will say that this volume is as good or better than it's `30 minute' precursors because it gives recipes for those times of the day which simply are not well covered by most cookbooks. And, Miss Rachael continues her previous style of easily available ingredients, very few `convenience' prepared foods, lots of fresh meats and vegetables, and no preaching about prowling local farmers' markets for the stuff which was in the ground two hours ago.
I continue to be impressed by the fact that both her '30 Minute Meals' and `$40 a Day' concepts were all hers before she started with the Food Network. And, after six cookbooks in about four years, I also like to think that all her recipes are also her own creations, although from the evidence of her acknowledgments and other chef / writers' practices (such as Jamie Oliver), I suspect a lot of Rachael's contributions to these books are rough drafts on TV scripts, cocktail napkins, and Dictaphones, all assembled and tightened up by a copy editor. My mother, for one, wonders how she can manage three shows AND cookbook writing all at the same time.
But, most of this is idle speculation and the real issue is how useful is Rachael's latest work to her core audience of busy young family members who like to cook but have no time to read Julia Child or Marcella Hazan or Paula Wolfert, or even `The Joy of Cooking' for that matter. One cannot discount the fact that looking for a recipe and shopping for ingredients may take as long as the time in front of the range. In this regard, Miss Rachael's recipes maintain the fast cooking lifestyle by not requiring any Internet shopping or trips to distant big city specialty markets.
This book gives lots of recipes for the neglected meals of the day, a hearty breakfast, a fast but tasty lunch, evenings in front of the TV watching a movie, and late night snacks. Among the more than 300 cookbooks I have reviewed, I have seen but two on breakfasts and one on sandwiches. Rachael fills this gap for people who want good, interesting food the other 23 hours of the day and don't have time to track down uncommon books by authors whose names they don't know. Nancy Silverton and Marian Cunningham may be foodie heroes, but the average 10 hour a day young professional does not know who these people are and whether or not they can trust their sandwich and breakfast books respectively. Rachael's `brand name' is a lot like that of Howard Johnson's in the 1950's. You know you are not getting gourmet fare, but you also will not get an unexpectedly poor meal.
In spite of the non-primetime dishes, these recipes still require a modicum of kitchen skills. Rachael's familiar aversion to measuring is not something you can acquire by reading. It takes practice and attention to what you are doing. Rachael's recipes also do not require a lot of kitchen equipment, but prep work and cooking will go faster if you have the right skills and a few pieces of high quality equipment. Topping the list of `not cheap' equipment is her Santoku knife, rangetop grill, two very good large (12 inch) saute pans, one or two large good Dutch ovens (8 quarts), an 8 quart pasta pot with pasta insert. A very good relationship with your oven's broiler is also necessary. I constantly envy her for her very retro range on her '30 Minute Meals' set. It is a much more convenient broiler than the floor level gas grill in most ovens. It is almost as convenient as a professional salamander.
Like most of her books, recipes are arranged by meal in the same style as her shows. This means that instructions for each meal show you how to organize the whole meal, not just a recipe at a time. The meals include:
Rise and Shiners (breakfast) with lots of scrambled eggs, French toast, scones, and hot cereals.
Let's Do Lunch with pasta salads, sandwiches, crudites, wraps, burgers, and did I say sandwiches.
Early Bird Specials with easy suppers based on chicken, thin pork chops, fast steaks, soups, and casseroles.
Sit Down Suppers with hearty retro recipes for slaws, grilled cheese sammies, linguini, and more burgers.
TV Dinners & Snacks with recreations of classic takeout dishes and finger foods.
Bistro Meals, or `Tony Bourdain without the swear words'.
Late-Nite Bites This chapter alone will have you keeping this book in your kitchen.
If all this were not enough to convince you, I offer the opinion that Rachael's procedure descriptions are quite good in that all prep instructions are given with the list of ingredients and each short paragraph begins with the most important verb. There is not a lot of instruction going on here. This is the recipe, the whole recipe, and nothing but the recipe. That's why you need to expect to make the most of Rachel's recipes only when you are comfortable in the kitchen with a very sharp knife and very hot oil.
One small caveat is that the pastel colored print can be hard on older eyes. I ran into more than one person who genuinely had trouble reading the instructions.
Rachael delivers the goods again to her core audience. Highly recommended if you like her show or her earlier books.
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